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KVM vs VMware ESXi comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.5
KVM users save $20,000 monthly due to its open-source nature, eliminating license fees and offering cost-effective virtualization.
Sentiment score
5.8
VMware ESXi offers significant savings and efficiency by reducing hardware needs and supporting infrastructure virtualization, despite rising costs.
KVM definitely saves costs since it is open-source and does not obligate us to pay for licenses as necessary with other virtualization solutions.
Chief Technology Officer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
The management burden decreased from a 20-person team to just five or six people providing 24/7 support.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
VMware ESXi has reduced cost and energy in the long term because we have virtualized our infrastructure.
specialist at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.7
KVM relies on community support; effectiveness varies, with some preferring paid options like Red Hat for dedicated assistance.
Sentiment score
7.0
VMware ESXi support experiences vary post-Broadcom acquisition, with mixed reviews on response time and service quality improvements needed.
Paid support is also obtainable from companies like Red Hat for more critical issues.
Chief Technology Officer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
SAP B1 Support Consultant at Abacus Consulting
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
Customer service and support are good; they are reachable, and at times remote support suffices.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
KVM offers high scalability for enterprise environments, leveraging Linux kernel architecture, though rapid expansion may challenge larger companies.
Sentiment score
7.6
VMware ESXi efficiently handles scalability for diverse organizations, despite some challenges with horizontal scalability, licensing, and implementation.
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
KVM is generally stable and reliable, though occasional issues arise during I/O tasks or hardware changes, requiring careful handling.
Sentiment score
8.3
VMware ESXi is praised for its stability and reliability, though some report occasional issues, largely resolved in updates.
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
Stability rates a perfect 10.
Managing Partner at evercloud
VMware ESXi's stability is very stable.
specialist at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

KVM needs user interface improvements, better networking, enhanced tools, platform compatibility, optimized resources, and improved support and documentation.
VMware ESXi faces challenges in pricing, licensing, scalability, interface usability, support response, cloud integration, and updating processes.
In comparison to VMware, which offers a more balanced set of management features, KVM could improve in terms of user-friendly tooling.
Chief Technology Officer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Setup Cost

KVM is a cost-effective, open-source virtualization platform often preferred over VMware, with affordable support options enhancing its appeal.
Enterprise users find VMware ESXi expensive, with increased costs and complexity, particularly affecting smaller and developing region users.
Compared to VMware and Microsoft, KVM offers better pricing and licensing options.
Chief Technology Officer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
The solution is moderately priced, not exactly cheap yet not overly expensive either.
SAP B1 Support Consultant at Abacus Consulting
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
 

Valuable Features

KVM excels in performance, scalability, ease of management, and security, offering seamless Linux integration and cost-effective virtualization.
VMware ESXi provides high availability, efficient virtualization, seamless integration, and centralized management for scalable, flexible, stable IT environments.
The most valuable feature of KVM is its superior real-time performance, which results in lower latency compared to alternatives like VMware and Microsoft.
Chief Technology Officer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
Head IT at Burraq Cyber Security Solutions
As a level one or bare metal hypervisor, its unmatched scalability depends on underlying hardware, capable of managing large numbers of physical servers with one management platform.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
vMotion is a daily used technology that allows us to have machines distributed across different sites while maintaining redundancy between the sites.
Managing Partner at evercloud
 

Categories and Ranking

KVM
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware ESXi
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of KVM is 6.6%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware ESXi is 2.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware ESXi2.5%
KVM6.6%
Other90.9%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

BB
Chief Technology Officer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Low latency in mission-critical environments with different virtualization environments
The most valuable feature of KVM is its superior real-time performance, which results in lower latency compared to alternatives like VMware and Microsoft. The ability to switch from one VM to another efficiently, thanks to the implementation of a real-time kernel, ensures delays remain minimal, thereby meeting our organization's performance requirements. This improved latency is critical because any delay in voice transmission could lead to life-threatening situations. Additionally, KVM being open-source means that we are not obligated to pay for licenses, which significantly reduces costs and simplifies license handling for ourselves and on behalf of customers.
Gourab Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Virtualization has transformed our data center and delivers consistent uptime with seamless maintenance
The most valuable feature VMware ESXi offers me is the user interface and the ease of handling operations without downtime, which is the biggest advantage, particularly with capabilities for live patching, and VCF 9 in patching areas; the bundled licensing provided simplifies management as I can utilize resources based on my needs without worrying too much about individual licenses. The zero-downtime patching is the feature that makes the biggest difference in my day-to-day operations, as well as managing hosts with an n+1 configuration, using a buffer host to streamline maintenance within a cluster of hosts. The vMotion feature is another important aspect, as we opt for auto vMotion to optimize resources within the cluster, enabling the underlying VMs to be moved seamlessly from one host to another based on utilization without impacting applications. VMware ESXi has positively impacted our organization significantly in terms of operations and cost optimization, as we optimized our environment under a per-core license agreement, achieving around 30 to 40% cost-effectiveness and maintaining almost 99.99% uptime across our environment, where VMware ESXi is run on about 85% of our setup. Improvements in operations were made possible through visibility provided by VMware ESXi into hardware enhancements, such as virtual storage platforms with vSAN, which we incorporated into our environment supported by VMware ESXi 9 to enable effective live patching without impacting operations, and we regularly utilize RV tool reports to track actual utilization and optimize resources, reducing our footprint from 100 VMs on 100 hosts to 47 hosts, yielding substantial financial benefits thanks to the support from our VMware ESXi TAM.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Why KVM??? Help please!
KVM scales better, orchestration better, performs better and supports a wider range of hardware and, also, you can implement at ZERO cost and with a very powerful web interface for management, from...
Why KVM??? Help please!
Small support team, small cluster, low core count, use VMware products Large support team, large clusters with many cores, use KVM. KVM scales better, orchestration better, performs better and supp...
Why KVM??? Help please!
Far from being an expert, my opinion is that the positive sides of KVM are: Lower costs and open-source which gives the abilities to customize it according to the specific needs of each customer.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware ESXi?
We recently renewed our VMware ESXi subscription for 14,000 cores, and the total cost was approximately 16 crore for three years. Overall, I found the pricing and licensing process to be very simpl...
What needs improvement with VMware ESXi?
While there is nothing particularly frustrating, a quicker response from VMware ESXi for planning existing hardware implementations of VCF 9 would be beneficial, especially for P1 issues where reso...
What advice do you have for others considering VMware ESXi?
For large enterprises with over 1,000 to 2,000 servers, my advice is to adopt VMware ESXi, ensuring you use the latest technology-supported hardware such as vSAN for an easier operational experienc...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MediaWiki, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Commons
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Find out what your peers are saying about KVM vs. VMware ESXi and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,818 professionals have used our research since 2012.